Book excerpt: Pregnancy, childbirth and being a newborn are not diseases - they are special periods in human life when the risk of death or disability can be very high. Recognizing this, the last decade has brought enormous progress in science and technology into improving maternal and newborn health, such as the treatment of genetic diseases, intra-uterine surgery, and improved knowledge about the human genome. Despite this, perinatal disease and disability worldwide still remains very high. The most authoritative work on perinatal medicine currently available, Textbook of Perinatal Medicine, Second Edition builds on the huge success of its predecessor to provide a comprehensive two-volume text without parallel in terms of size and authority.